djb@cbnews.cb.att.com (david.j.bryant) (05/04/91)
I've seen an occasional article go by regarding the use of XDM with X terminals, but admit to not being very familiar with XDM. Before I go off and try and puzzle it out, how widely used is XDM? In particular: 1) How widespread is its use in general? Do the great majority of X terminal users rely on it? If I'm going to buy and use X terminals, do I need to have XDM available in order for them to be maximally useful? 2) Do commercial X terminal manufacturers encourage or require XDM? Since I buy my X Window System environments from vendors (e.g. Sun, HP, AT&T), should I be hammering on them to support XDM so I can make good use of my X terminals? 3) What X terminal and/or X Window System vendors (if any) support XDM? I'm willing to dive into XDM in anticipation of getting an X terminal, but don't know whether it's vital, preferred, nifty, useful-but-unnecessary, or just an interesting alternative for connecting X terminals to the rest of my environment. Thanks in advance, UUCP: att!cbosgd!djb David Bryant att!cborion!djb AT&T Bell Laboratories INTERNET: djb@cborion.cb.att.com Room 1B-256 djb@cbosgd.att.com 6200 East Broad Street PHONE: (614) 860-4516 Columbus, Ohio 43213 FAX: (614) 868-4302
schoch@trident.arc.nasa.gov (Steve Schoch) (05/07/91)
In article <1991May3.203305.5000@cbnews.cb.att.com>, djb@cbnews.cb.att.com (david.j.bryant) writes: |> 3) What X terminal and/or X Window System vendors (if any) |> support XDM? XDM is supported by NCD. I believe all of their current X terminals will use it if you configure them to. The NCD is very flexible in that you can bring up a telnet window to connect to a remote host from which you can start your window manager or you can tell the NCD to send a XDMCP query to a single host or to send a broadcast XDMCP query. XDM is supported by the the MIT server. To activate it on your sun or whatever, type "X -broadcast -once" and if there is a machine on your network running XDM you will get a login window. This is not the usual method of starting X on a workstation. The usual method is to run XDM on the local workstation and have it invoke the X server. I have used XDM under OpenWindows. It was simple since I had been using the MIT X server before. All I did was to remove the symbolic link in /usr/local of X to Xsun and make X a shell script that set some environment variables and exec'd xnews. XDM gives all the proper arguments including ones to set up the authorization key. Steve
mjb@visual.com (Mike Braca) (05/09/91)
In article <1991May3.203305.5000@cbnews.cb.att.com> djb@cbnews.cb.att.com (david.j.bryant) writes: > 1) ... X terminals, do I need to have XDM available in order for them > to be maximally useful? It is a *major* convenience for getting to a login prompt on your terminal. Once you're up and running there's no advantage (at least not with any current implementations). > 2) Do commercial X terminal manufacturers encourage or require XDM? We encourage it very strongly. We don't require it; you can run local terminal emulators via a standard protocol like Telnet to get started. > 3) What X terminal and/or X Window System vendors (if any) > support XDM? All Visual X terminals support the R4 XDMCP protocol. In addition, we have a host selection menu that pops up after querying the network. All hosts that responded affirmatively to the query are listed, along with some status (requires a trivial hack to the XDM code), sort of like so: +----------------------------------------------------+ | HOST STATUS | +----------------------------------------------------+ | bird 8:09am up 2 days, 9 users, load 0.00 | | chief 8:08am up 5 days, 4 users, load 3.41 | | mchale 8:09am up 2:41, 7 users, load 2.01 | | ... | | | Just double-click on a host name to start a session to that host. I am now completely addicted to this method of host connection! Mike Braca Visual Technology mjb@visual.COM